Questions tagged [rotations]

This tag is for questions about rotations: a type of rigid motion in a space.

In 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional Euclidean space, the rotation is a type of distance-preserving linear transformation that has a fixed point and preserves orientation. In terms of the usual inner product $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ on $\Bbb R^2$ and $\Bbb R^3$, rotations are the transformations $T$ such that $\langle Tx,Ty\rangle=\langle x,y\rangle$ for all $x,y$, and the determinant of $T$ is equal to 1.

Geometrically, the rotation in $\Bbb R^2$, "spins" the plane around a point without flipping the plane or sliding it. In $\Bbb R^3$, a rotation fixes a line (called the axis of rotation) and "spins" the space around this line (without reflecting or sliding).

More generally, given an inner product space $V$ over a field $\Bbb F$, anything in the part of the orthogonal group connected to the identity can be considered a "rotation." This allows rotations to be defined for $\Bbb R^n$ for $n$ greater than 2 and 3, as well as vector spaces over fields other than $\Bbb R$.

As an example, the space $\Bbb R^4$ with a non-Euclidean metric $(1,1,1,-1)$ is Minkowski space which is a model for special relativity. Rotations still play an important role here beyond that of rotations in the spacial coordinates. For example, Lorentz transformations are rotations which move the time coordinate.

Rotations can also be represented in terms of matrices and the tag often goes with this tag, as questions can pertain to rotation matrices.

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Yaw,Pitch and Roll Multiplication

If I have $(\alpha_1,\beta_1,\gamma_1)$ and $(\alpha_2,\beta_2,\gamma_2)$ as two set of rotation angles in radians.Where $\alpha$ is Yaw of $\alpha$ about $z$ axis, $\beta$ is pitch about $y$ axis and $\gamma$ is roll about $x$ axis. My question is…
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Rotating Angular Velocity Vector By A Quaternion

I'm working on an AHRS system and I have 3 axis gyros and they are not in alignment with the frame of the vehicle. This means that integrating the raw output from the gyros produces an orientation that does not reflect the true orientation of the…
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Cylinder inside a cylinder - rotation.

A homogeneous cylinder with radius a and mass m rolls in a hollow cylinder with radius R. Determine the kinetic energy of the cylinder as function of $\dot{\theta}$. Alright, I found this problem inside an old textbook of mine. Strangely enough…
Rixton
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Bundle Adjustment in the Large and Rodrigues' Rotation Formula

We use a pinhole camera model; the parameters we estimate for each camera area rotation R, a translation t, a focal length f and two radial distortion parameters k1 and k2. The formula for projecting a 3D point X into a camera R,t,f,k1,k2…
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How does turtle geometry keep track of which way is up/down?

I'm having an issue understanding how turtle geometry is supposed to work. Let's say for the orientation vector O the Heading, Left, and Up unit vectors for the turtle are: So the turtle is facing entirely in the x-direction. If you wanted to…
MFerguson
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What is a continuous representation space for 3D rotations under cube symmetries?

I'm not sure if I'm using the right terminology on my title but I'll explain here. By "continuous representation space" I mean that I want to represent all physical rotations (call this the set $X$) in some manifold in $R = \mathbb{R}^n$ where I'm…
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How to compare two rotations represented by axis-angle rotation vectors?

I currently have two rotation vectors r1 and r2 using axis-angle representations, i.e. they are 3d vectors, their norms are the rotation angles and the normalized unit vectors are rotation axes respectively. I am confused how to compare r1 and r2.…
Ruyi
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Rotate a shape 360 degrees on one axis and not be the same as the starting shape?

Are there shapes in nth dimensions (in euclidian geometry), that can be rotated 360 degrees on one axis and have more than one point not in the same place? Alternatively, in non-euclidian geometry, are there any objects or shapes that can be rotated…
blueberry
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Most efficient way to linearly interpolate rotations expressed as axis-angles?

I have rotations expressed as axis-angle pairs. I want to linearly interpolate between two rotations such that if I would animate the interpolation, the resulting rotation would be the most direct transition between the two orientations. What I…
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Get image dimension after rotation

I asked this question at StackOverflow, maybe because it's all about math, I don't get a working solution. I'm actually trying to get the image dimension after rotation using canvas with a certain angle in Javascript.
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Converting from Euler angles to axis-angle and back

I've been writing a small utility library for converting different 3D rotation representations. My sources are mainly Wikipedia, a couple text books, and Martin Baker's excellent site. I've been unit testing each of my conversions (using values…
marcman
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How can I rotate a point 45 degrees counterclockwise around any point?

What is a formula (in terms of $x$ and $y$ coordinates) for rotating one point about another by $45$ degrees counterclockwise? I've tried using: $$x'=x\cos(-45^{\circ})-y\cos(-45^{\circ})$$ $$y'=x\sin(-45^{\circ})+y\cos(-45^{\circ})$$ (I would, for…
Nichols
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What do clockwise and anticlockwise designate?

I know they mean "rotate this way" and "rotate that way," respectively, but is there a standard name for "rotational direction?" "omega" often measures the angle, but what variable name usually designates the direction of rotation? (I'm naming…
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Rotate Angle Smoothly To Point

I am trying to take angle A and smoothly rotate that angle towards angle B at a speed of S where the speed decreases with the distance between angle A and B. While angle A also turns via the shortest path to angle B. A script I was given as a model…
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Calculate width and height to give to rectangle to achieve required size after rotation

My goal is to create a rotated rectangle with a size to my specification. I begin with a regular rectangle which gets rotated 45 degrees. Now I know I have succeeded to calculate the width and height after the rotation using; rotatedSize =…
Thizzer
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